An AC plane discharge panel that typifies a plasma display panel (hereinafter abbreviated as “PDP”) has a front plate and a back plate disposed opposite to each other. A number of discharge cells are formed between the front and back plates. Display electrodes, each consisting a pair of electrodes (i.e., a scanning electrode and a sustain electrode), are formed on a front glass substrate in plural pairs and parallel to each other in the front plate. A dielectric layer and a protective layer are formed over the display electrodes. The back plate has a back glass substrate on which plural parallel data electrodes are formed. A dielectric layer is formed over the data electrodes. Plural barrier ribs are formed on the dielectric layer in parallel to the data electrodes. A phosphor layer is formed on each of the surface of the dielectric layer and the side surfaces of the barrier ribs. The front and back plates are disposed opposite to each other and sealed such that the display electrodes and data electrodes intersect each other in three dimensions. A discharge gas is sealed in the internal discharge space. The discharge cells are formed in the portions in which the display electrodes and data electrodes are opposite to each other. In the PDP constructed in this way, electric discharging is induced within the gas in each discharge cell, so that ultraviolet rays are produced. The ultraviolet rays excite phosphors of colors of R, G, and B to emit light, thus providing a color display.
Generally, the subfield method is available to drive a PDP. In this method, one field period is divided into plural subfields. Gray levels are represented by combinations of emitted subfields. Each subfield has an initializing period, a writing period, and a sustaining period. During the initializing period, electric discharging is done for initialization within the discharge cell. This erases the previous history of wall charges at individual discharge cells. Also, wall charges necessary for a subsequent writing operation are formed. During the writing period, scanning pulses are successively applied to scanning electrodes. Writing pulses corresponding to an image signal to be displayed are applied to data electrodes. Thus, writing discharging occurs selectively between the scanning electrodes and data electrodes, thus selectively forming wall charges. During the sustaining period, a given number of sustaining pulses corresponding to brightness weights are applied between the scanning electrodes and sustain electrodes. Electric discharging occurs selectively within the discharge cells at which wall charges are created by writing discharging. Therefore, the discharge cells emit light.
In order to display an image correctly, it is important to perform selective writing discharging reliably during each writing period. However, the writing discharging involves many unstable factors. One of the factors is that the discharging is easily affected by the dimensional accuracy of the electrodes. Another factor is that the phosphor layers formed on data electrodes hinder discharging. In view of these problems, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2000-100338 discloses a PDP having data electrodes whose shape are devised to permit writing operations to be performed in a short time reliably, thus reducing power consumption.
PDPs have been fabricated in ever increasing size. At the same time, PDPs have had higher definitions. It has become more difficult to fabricate discharge cells accurately over the whole surface of such a PDP. Meanwhile, application of the shape of data electrodes relying on the aforementioned related art technique makes electric discharging stable without being greatly affected by the dimensional accuracy of the electrodes. However, the application of the shape of the data electrodes increases the power consumption. If the shape of the data electrodes is designed in such a way that the power consumption is not increased, electric discharging is affected by the dimensional accuracy of the electrodes and thus is unstable. With the shape of the data electrode relying on the related art technique in this way, it is difficult to accomplish both stability of electric discharging and suppression of power consumption.